


Eyes in the Dark

by Laylah



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Anonymous Sex, Jossed, M/M, Pre-Canon, Supernatural Elements, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 02:59:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11705400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: Statement of Jonathan Sims, given September 15, 2015, regarding an unusual intimate encounter several years prior and its aftereffects.





	Eyes in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [track_04](https://archiveofourown.org/users/track_04/gifts).



Statement begins:

The incident I will be recounting here was probably my first encounter with the unexplainable; I suppose it may have been one of the things that led me to consider employment with someplace like the Institute to begin with.

It was several years ago now, the summer after my first year at university. I was enjoying the freedom of being on my own in the big city. Not that Bournemouth is the middle of nowhere, of course, but it can't compare to London, and for a young man there's a nothing quite so reassuring as the knowledge that one's parents are ninety-some miles away from whatever excitement one is currently pursuing.

So there I was, with a forgettable internship to take up my days, and all the adventure I could hope for in my off hours. I know I don't look like the partying sort now. I've grown up a good deal since then. In its own odd way, this experience contributed, I think.

I would go to Soho most Friday and Saturday nights, and... There isn't a delicate way to say this, is there? There was a stretch of a few blocks where the pubs were welcoming, and the—I'm sorry, I did say I was going to stop hesitating. Where the cruising was good. I'm sure it's changed by now. The best and hottest spots will have shifted. Some of the pubs have probably changed hands, maybe been torn down to put in antique shops or—or—that's not important. There was a place to go, and I was young enough to be thrilled at the idea, but old enough to get away with it.

And it was one of those evenings that I met him. The stranger. The one who wound up being my first brush with the... paranormal. That word still sounds absurd.

At any rate, I got there, the same street I'd been visiting a few times a week for the last month, at least, and I was looking around for someone who was... interested in the same kind of good time I was, and instead there was this man I knew I hadn't seen before.

He looked, you understand, more like someone who ought to be loitering outside a goth club than cruising the pubs. Tall, pale, with dyed black hair and a long leather coat even though it was July. I glanced past him at first.

And then looked back, because somehow there was nobody else on the street. And that's absurd, of course; it should have alarmed me enough to make me leave. It was a Saturday night in the middle of summer! There should have been people everywhere. But instead it was just this strange quiet like the city was abandoned, and there he was. I should have been more unsettled by that than I was. Clearly something wasn't right here. But...

I was young, I was stupid, I was thinking with my... well, you know how it goes. I looked back at him and he was watching me. His eyes were...captivating. That's trite, but there's no better word for it. I couldn't tell you what color they were but I couldn't look away from them. He smiled at me, and it was definitely the sort of smile that _did_ belong where we were. When he turned away and headed back into an alleyway, I followed him.

We... Well, you know. It's not as though this part is a shock, is it? We had sex. You don't need more details than that and I don't feel any need to turn this statement into a tawdry confession.

Anyway, it was the aftermath of the act itself that matters, as far as the Institute is concerned. I tend— _tended_ , I don't make a habit of these things anymore—to be very careful about the exchange of bodily fluids. So it was a cause for some small alarm when I realized that I had gotten some of my current partner's semen on my hand. Very low-risk contact as the scale of these things goes, I know, but as I said, I did prefer to be careful. 

I wiped the stuff off with a tissue and noticed some sort of indistinct dark mark on the back of my hand, like an ink smudge of some kind. I looked up, and my erstwhile partner was already gone. Not simply walking away, but gone entirely, vanished.

Unsettled, I put my clothes back in order as quickly as possible and hurried back out to the street. The street was bustling. All the lively excitement you would expect from the area and the time of night. Just as if it hadn't been completely deserted a few minutes before.

Under the sodium glow of the streetlights, the ink smudge on my hand resolved into an actual shape: an open, staring eye, about the size of my thumbnail.

Well, by that point my tolerance for bizarre nonsense had just about hit its limit for the night, so I left. I went home.

I tried to wash off the eye marking when I got back to the house I was sharing. It wouldn't come off. I scrubbed at it until my skin was red and tender but it didn't even seem to fade. Eventually there was nothing I could do but just go to sleep.

In the morning, it wasn't there anymore. My hand was completely clean, completely normal. I thought for a little while that I must have just been hallucinating the night before. Maybe somebody slipped me something unsavory in a drink, that sort of thing. 

Then as I was getting dressed I discovered the eye mark on the outside of my knee. Just like when it was on my hand, it looked like it had been drawn in ink, or like it was an old tattoo, the color no longer quite a crisp black. And just like when it was on my hand, applying soap and a washcloth did nothing to remove it.

I was sure it was the same mark, that it had moved somehow in the night. There was clearly something strange going on here, so I kept checking on it throughout the day, ducking into the washroom to check and see if it had gone anywhere. It stayed put all of Sunday. Monday morning, though, it had migrated to a spot just at the bottom of my ribcage.

My Saturday night hookup was behind this, I was quite certain. I resolved to look for him the next time I went out. 

But although I looked for him every time I went to Soho for the rest of the summer, I never managed to find him again. The eye mark kept moving around; it didn't seem to have a pattern that I could discern, though it did seem to change positions at solar midnight consistently. By the time the new school year started up, I'd mostly given up hope of finding my mysterious stranger again to ask him what this was. I went back to my life, more or less. Apart from the occasional days when I would have to stay home "sick" because the blasted thing had migrated to my face.

That mark has been traveling over my skin ever since, wandering without any apparent purpose or meaning. I'd almost grown used to it; I'd almost forgotten that it was an unnatural state of affairs. I'd had it for years, after all. But last week I woke up one morning and discovered in the shower that I had two such marks, not one. Today, I have three.

Something is changing. And I don't know what it means.

Statement ends.


End file.
